Azure Stack Home Lab Build

In the beginning there was…nothing

Microsoft Azure Stack is not something I could build and run on my desktop like my Configmgr lab, which runs on my W10 desktop while I use it for work as well. I had to decide if I wanted to spend the money on a server or wait for the hardware to fall into my hands. Because I saw this a real opportunity to learn something that would be valuable to my customers and myself, and because my wife…I mean CFO, approved the request I purchased the individual parts to build my own server for my home lab.

Having had a server in my home lab previously I knew of the drawbacks. Noise and heat. Lots of both. Doing a customer demo when you are sweating and they cannot hear you makes doing a demo difficult. That meant I had to meet the hardware requirements of Azure Stack, and it had to be quiet and cool.

And then there was…

After lots of research, I ordered all of my hardware. Things have not changed much since I got my A+ back in 1995, thankfully. And yes it did boot the first time I powered it on. I won’t get into the hardware details but you can take a stab at it based on the images.

The case is a little larger than I expected. It has plenty of room to add additional drives later on though. It is behind my desk between the desk and the haze-grey wall you see here. It would actually fit under my desk but until I decide to move my Dell desktop it will stay back there.

MSI motherboard. While a gaming motherboard it supports my needs, which don’t include gaming.

Motherboard installed, i7 CPU installed, H20 powered CPU cooler installed and connected. The memory is installed but I later moved it for quad channel

This shows the five drives mounted. It is a bit blurry but my Pearl Izumu shoes are in focus.

This shows the system running. Memory moved for quad channel, video card mounted, power supply, so on.

Closer shot of the system running. You can see the “40” indicating the CPU temp.

And now Windows Server 2016 TP4 installing from USB. With a shot of my whiteboard cleaned off for Azure Stack testing. And also my daughters “If I Were In Charge Of The World” worksheet from first grade.

Azure Stack extracting in Server 2016 TP4

You can download the bits for Azure Stack here, and this is a link to the instructions on how to setup Azure Stack. The instrcutions assume you have met the list of hardware requirements listed here and other requirements listed here.

Since I had a few hours while it installed, I went for a run out at Goldmine trail, which is about 20 minutes from me.

The install threw an error and I had to go visit a customer to upgrade them to Configmgr current branch, so it would have to wait until I got back. At least, my server was nice and warm at home.

Back at home. My install on the base OS did not work. It complained that my time was off. There is no UTC/local time setting in my BIOS and here in AZ we don’t do DST, so today we are equal to MST. All times and time zones matched so after talking to a couple Azure TSP’s I decided to install using the VHD method, which worked, not sure why but it did. It only took about two hours to install instead of the estimated four.

After returning from the northwest…

I completed the setup in my lab and it was pretty painless to get running. I have since reinstalled it on the same system, starting from scratch.

When setup is complete and you run Failover Cluster Manager, or Hyper-V Manager, you will see the list of VM’s running. If the PowerShell script throws an error during setup, fix the issue and then run the script again and it will pick up where it left off. At the end you should have something like this.

Azure Stack VMs

Here is a breakdown of each VM you have running once the installation of Azure Stack has completed:

ADVM Virtual machine that hosts Active Directory, DNS, and DHCP services for Microsoft Azure Stack. These infrastructure foundational services are required to bring up the Azure Stack as well as the ongoing maintenance.

ACSVM Virtual machine that hosts the Azure Consistent Storage services. These services run on the Service Fabric on a dedicated virtual machine.

NCVM Virtual machine that hosts the Microsoft network controller component, which is a key component of the Microsoft software-defined networking technology. These services run on the Service Fabric on this dedicated virtual machine.

Manually Shutting Down Azure Stack

If you need to manually shutdown and startup the VM’s this is the recommended order:

ClientVM, PortalVM, xRPVM, ACSVM, MuxVM, NCVM, SQLVM

Hyper-V will shut down the other three for you as you shutdown your server. The start order is reverse. If you need to manually shut down, after you start the VM’s ensure that all the services on xRPVM are running and happy, if it isn’t you will have issues since it hosts the core of the Azure Stack resources.

Azure Stack Portal

This is a set of images on the ClientVM. Showing the portal view, then the ARM templates resources imported from GitHub, then as it appears in the marketplace. Then a custom built VM template imported into the marketplace, using PowerShell to add a SQL 2014 custom VM into the platform image repository (PIR), and finally the custom SQL 2014 VM listed in the marketplace.